Okay, so a week ago I shot and made this film of Aces High...
I'd been frustrated with not being able to capture a decent slice of simulated air-combat action in movie form, what with problems with the movie maker not recording AVIs and extra frames being added when it does, not to mention the loss of sounds, blackouts and other 'live' effects that disappear in the saved replays...
Here's a film I made with the film viewer... the sound didn't record and there were extra frames every time I moved the POV, and this was the only time I got it to work anyhow...
Aces High (sped up x3):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1pEvvLJNv8So I reverted to the simple approach, I plonked my camcorder in front of the screen and turned out the lights...
There was a big Niki mission upping so I thought I'd 'fly defensively' and try to stay alive, and hopefully less than twenty minutes later (the length of the camcorder dvd-rw) I'd have at least some good live sounds and redouts etc. to combine with shots I'd shoot later off the monitor screen of the replays... obtaining a few better angles and 'filmic narrative pace' - it would all be compressed (turned into what looks like 320 x 240 Doom or Air Warrior 2) for youtube in the end, so what's the difference...?!
The finished result is a bit 'me-centric' - I didn't record cut-aways to the other planes POVs, as I wanted to maintain some sort of sense of context of what's happening where, the flow of battle and the movement of objects through the frame, although I did find cut-aways to the town-capturing C47 were indeed essential...
The whole flight lasted seventeen minutes, about eight minutes getting there and nine minutes vultching/keeping the enemy away from the C47s and town... As youtube only allows films less than 100MBs I'd reduced it (with Adobe Premiere 6) from camcorder quality (not great - though it does look better on dvd) to 320 x 240 dvix with a lower sound sample rate (etc.) and chopped it into two parts, 'getting there' and 'staying there'...
Part One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmayF3HRO_gPart Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lotIKBR3Tp8One thing that did work out okay was the music, which I did last, working backwards from the landing... after a few trials (it began with the music from 'Zulu' at one point lol) it worked out pretty well, adding a bit of cinematic melodrama to the proceedings and drowning out some of the annoyingly loud 'beeps' at the start of vox messages...
So, I don't know if any rooks or bishops remember this niki mission from late 05/06/07 (or early 07-05-07 as it was in the UK) but I certainly do.
It was great fun!
Comments (on the youtube page) would be appreciated... feel free to say what you want here as well though. I do actually feel a bit guilty for compiling this 'narrative' out of others 'performances'... which is another reason I didn't cut away to other players individual efforts...
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
drew1969
